Bob Jones III apologizes for endorsing the stoning of gays

Bob Jones III, the former president of Bob Jones University, has apologized for comments he made at a White House press conference in 1980, calling for gays to be stoned to death.

"I take personal ownership of this inflammatory rhetoric," Jones said in a statement issued Saturday. "This reckless statement was made in the heat of a political controversy 35 years ago."

Jones' mea culpa comes after the school received a petition asking for the former president of the fundamentalist Christian school in South Carolina to apologize for the comments he made to the Associated Press 35 years ago.

"I'm sure this will be greatly misquoted," Jones said at the time. "But it would not be a bad idea to bring the swift justice today that was brought in Israel's day against murder and rape and homosexuality. I guarantee it would solve the problem post-haste if homosexuals were stoned, if murderers were immediately killed as the Bible commands."

According to USA Today, the petition asking Jones to apologize received 2,000 signatures and BJUnity, a support group for the LGBT community at the school, said they were "grateful" for Jones' contrition.

In his statement, Jones, whose grandfather founded the university in 1927, said his anti-gay comments were "antithetical to my theology."

"Upon now reading these long-forgotten words, they seem to me as words belonging to a total stranger--were my name not attached," he said. "I cannot erase them, but wish I could, because they do not represent the belief of my heart or the content of my preaching. Neither before, nor since, that event in 1980 have I ever advocated the stoning of sinners."

The 75-year-old Jones retired as president of the school in 2005.